I kissed him back even as my thoughts were swirling. It was almost like I couldn’t get myself to understand what I’d just heard. Because Jesse Foster wasn’t supposed to say things like that—he just wasn’t.

A second later, I realized what was wrong with that logic. Jesse was saying this. He’d just said it. Jesse, the real person in front of me. Not the version of him I’d had in my head all these years, until he’d become this separate thing entirely.

He was a nice guy. He was cute, and he was a great kisser. But that was actually all I really knew about him, Jesse the actual person. I couldn’t have told you his favorite movie, or his roommate’s name, or his greatest fear. He wasn’t who I thought he was all those years, because that person didn’t exist. That Jesse was just a compilation of everything I’d projected onto him, coupled with a handful of real-life interactions that I’d given far too much value to.

And as the realization of this hit me full force, I broke away from him, pushing myself up on my elbows. “Jesse . . .”

“What?” Jesse asked, looking confused. Then he smiled at me, raising one eyebrow. “You want to head up to the guesthouse?”

“No,” I said, maybe a little too quickly, because Jesse’s face fell. “It’s just . . .” I tucked my hair behind my ears and looked over at him. And for the first time in maybe ever, I didn’t see Jesse Foster—the person I’d thought about for years and made far too many birthday wishes about. The guy who had seemed to loom so large in the halls of Stanwich High but now just seemed like . . . a guy. I didn’t see the boy I’d thought about for hours and hours on end, imagining just what it could be like to have him see me, choose me. It was like something had fallen away, some of the aura that had always surrounded him, the one that I was beginning to understand was all my doing. It was like I’d turned him into a character in my mother’s comic strip, a little too polished and perfect—and utterly two-dimensional. I didn’t know the guy sitting on the couch next to me. And he didn’t know me.

“I think . . . maybe I should go,” I said, realizing as I spoke the words that it was what I wanted.

“Oh,” Jesse said, sitting up even more, looking at me. “Is . . . ? Did I do something?”

“No,” I said quickly, because this was the truth. It wasn’t anything Jesse had or hadn’t done. It’s that he wasn’t the person I’d talked myself into believing he was all these years. And that wasn’t his fault. But it did mean that as fun as kissing him had been, I probably needed to go. “I just . . .” I took a breath, then gestured between us. “I’m thinking this might not be the best idea.”

“Oh.” Jesse blinked at me, and I had a feeling he was having trouble understanding what had changed in the last few minutes.

“I’m sorry,” I said, pushing myself off the couch and picking up my bag, knowing that if I looked at him lying on the couch, his shirt slightly rumpled where I’d been running my hands over it, I’d find myself back on the couch, kissing him again. I stopped by the side door, already extracting my keys so that I wouldn’t be tempted to return to the couch. “Um . . . I’ll see you around?”

“Yeah,” Jesse said, giving me a smile that was still slightly confused but was amiable enough. I saw that he was already reaching for the remote—like he was just going to transition his night, so easily, to watching TV. And seeing that was maybe all the proof I needed that I was doing the right thing. “Take care, Charlie.”

“You too.” I gave him a smile, but he was leaning back against the couch, not looking at me. And after a moment, I turned and left the basement, stepping outside into the cool night air and taking a deep breath. Since I’d been in there, it had stopped raining.

I had just gotten into my car when my phone rang. I pulled it out of my bag and saw that it was J.J. calling. I hesitated for only a second before sliding my finger across the screen. “J.J.?”

“Hey, Charlie,” J.J. said, speaking fast. “So. Um. We kind of got arrested?”

CHAPTER 26

Or, Give Me a Sign

* * *

I BARRELED DOWN THE ROAD, holding my phone with one hand and gripping the steering wheel with the other. J.J. hadn’t been very forthcoming with where he was. I’d assumed the police station on Stanwich Avenue, but when he tried to tell me where they were, he started using J.J.-style directions, which never used street names and always involved way too many descriptions of trees that resembled celebrities in profile. Finally, Mike had wrested the phone away from him, sent me a dropped pin, and after that, the line had gone dead.

If it had been J.J. alone, I might have been doubtful of what was actually happening—after years of exaggerations, I’d learned not to take him at his word. But the fact that Mike and Danny were with him—and that Danny hadn’t gotten on the phone to reassure me that everything was okay—was making me more nervous than I wanted to admit. And there was also the expression on Danny’s face when he’d left the family room—like he’d been looking for trouble. It certainly seemed like they’d found it.

I put the dropped pin into my map and followed the directions to it, my brights on against the pitch-black night. I’d been driving for only a few minutes when I realized I should not be the only person coming to help and that I probably shouldn’t have headed straight for my brothers, but should have let someone else know what was happening—like my parents.

Even as the thought entered my head, though, I dismissed it. That just wasn’t how the five of us did things—even when I was three and still getting the hang of complex sentences and running without falling over, I knew not to tattle if one of my siblings was tormenting me. We settled things on our own and only brought in a higher authority when it was absolutely necessary.

But even so, it seemed like I should not be the only cavalry who was coming. When I reached a stop sign, I paused for a little longer than usual—not that it mattered, there was nobody behind me—and called Rodney. I figured it couldn’t hurt to call the one lawyer whose number was saved in my phone. As I waited for the call to connect, I just hoped it wouldn’t matter that he hadn’t passed the bar yet. His phone went straight to voice mail—not surprising, considering that I’d called him on his wedding night. So I left him a message, conveying the little I knew about the situation, then texted him the dropped pin J.J. had sent me.

I was following the directions, making the turns that the automated voice on my map app (I’d changed it to an Australian guy I always called Hugh) told me to make, and it wasn’t until I was nearly there that I realized, my stomach sinking, where I was actually heading.

This was certainly not the police station. It was, of all places, Grant Avenue. There, on the side of the road, was Danny’s rental SUV, parked at an angle. There was a Stanwich Police car up the street from it, the sirens off but the lights on, the whirling blue and red lights against the darkness looking somehow out of place and cheerful—like they belonged at a carnival and not at the site of someone’s arrest.

My brothers were all standing by the curb, in a line, and there was a police officer in front of them, a flashlight in his hand that was pointing down at the ground, a small circle of light shining on the pavement. I pulled up behind the police car, then killed my engine and got out of the car, my heart beating fast. This looked serious, and it did not look good.

“Hold up there,” the police officer’s voice said sharply, and I stopped in my tracks immediately. He raised his flashlight toward me, and I squinted against it, but the whole world had just become washed out.

“That’s my sister” I heard J.J. say. “So if you could stop blinding her with a flashlight?” There was a tiny pause, maybe in which J.J. realized he was speaking to someone with a firearm and the ability to put him in jail. “Please?”

The flashlight beam was lowered, and I blinked quickly, trying to get rid of all the floating white lights that were now impairing my vision. “Can I—” I gestured toward my brothers, not sure if I was allowed to move or not yet. The walkie on the officer’s shoulder crackled, and he bent his head toward it, motioning me forward as he did with an annoyed wave.